Throughout our lives, we will come to find ourselves in a lot of different places.

A lot of different rooms.
A lot of different corners.
A lot of different wheres.

Those wheres will be unexpected. They will surprise us, scare us, change everything, change nothing, and break our hearts.

I’ve found myself in some pretty amazing wheres, and some pretty devastating places. But one of the constants was having the opportunity to be part of Postmasters Gallery, and to continue to feel like I am part of their huge art family.

Furthermore, outside of art, The Postmasters Family helped save my life… and helped me get back onto the path of trying to live my life. See Postmasters aren’t just a normal gallery. They’re everything and more. They’re community, they’re bravery, they’re hope, they’re protest, they’re US.

In 2008, I got to chance of a lifetime. I had decided the previous summer (2007), whilst working with steadfast ambitious & economically supported college-aged Americans, that I needed to catch up with my life and career ambitions. And my career ambitions was to be an artist and to live and work in NYC. Preferably in a gallery. This was no small-feat for an under confident, working class kid from Doncaster, UK (DONX!).

I worked at a bookies and at a toy-shop part-time during term-time, whilst praying to the art gods that I’d get my artworld NYC summer. I did anything to make sure I could afford to go.

I remember exactly where I was when Magda of Postmasters Gallery said she’d meet me in person with the chance of getting to be Postmasters’ intern the summer of 2008. I was sat with my friend James Cotton in the Graphic Design-Apple suite at the old art campus. It was a super sunny day for the winter and the sun was blinding through the large windows. I just-re-read that same email, over & over again. I still have it archived even though I no longer have that email address (at hotmail.com?!).

I remember being incredibly nervous. I think I was practically mute for the first 2 weeks of being at Postmasters. But I learned so much.

I learnt around 26 years of Postmasters Show history, and art history in the making, as I was set to digitalizing their whole archive. Endless slides to be scanned, and amazing write-ups of artists in ArtForum, NYT, Art In America, et al – of still practicing, artists who have since disappeared, but a theme emerged.

These shows were often groundbreaking, urgent, courageous, some genuinely funny, ahead of the curves. New Media Art shows before new media art was accepted as it is today (though we still have ways to go with this medium). Women artists equally represented, and mostly – it still felt contemporary, and alive and represented the values that Magda and Tamas have sought to bring to the artworld their whole life.

I also learnt how to send invoices via fax (though still not into faxing), I met some of the coolest artists who continue to inspire my practice today, about art museums collections & how they buy art for them, at one point – I was left manning the whole establishment for a week?! and I learnt loads from Magda and Paulina’s experiences and ideas.

I was properly schooled that summer I was at Postmasters. I remember leaving after my last shift and I walked down to 9th Ave, and had to search for a working pay-phone to call my mom because I felt so sad I was leaving this amazing thing I had sort of been apart of for a short time. I left that summer with my heart heavy but inspired.

I got back to the U.K. and art school felt kind of boring after that experience. I had to do something. Magda taught me that literally, anything is possible, even starting from scratch, along as you have perseverance, some people and community who can support you.

So my friends and I started our own lil’ artspace called CAKE (rebranded CAKE Everyone). We were a small space above a bar on West Street, Sheffield, UK. We lasted around 2 years and we learnt loads and had so much fun. But the thing is, I took everything I had learnt from Magda & Postmasters, and I put it into action in Sheffield – and invested it back into our local community.

I am still employing these lessons from this time into my life and practice.

Now, it would be easy to say – I became, like, an awesome artist, or got lots of gallery jobs… but because i’m not very smart or that talented, that didn’t really happen (and that’s ok!). But the year after I graduated was HARD. I nearly lost my own belief. But Magda offered hope and advise on the end of emails. That really helped me push through what I thought was a dark time…

Then things started to work out… I got a residency at SITE Gallery, I was working freelance as an illustrator, doing some university lecturing… I came over to work a summer in Boston/New Hampshire in the U.S.A. but I had been feeling poorly for a good few months before I went… tired beyond belief, coughing up blood, endless nosebleeds, bone-pain, flu-like symptoms, drenching nightsweats.

And on the 21st August, everything changed. I found myself sitting in front an oncologist at General Mass Hospital. With my YMCA boss, 3,000 miles away from home. The doctor cleared his throat a few times and told me it looked like Lymphoma… Cancer. He told me, if it was time-sensitive and I didn’t get it sorted then I would die.

Well. As you can imagine, that wasn’t the news that I was expecting. I didn’t tell my mom for weeks (I was only 24). I felt ashamed, I don’t even know why. I thought it couldn’t be true. I googled the odds every-single-day. My boss kept telling me I needed to go home. The only person who I decided to tell who I didn’t work with — was Magda.

Because Magda was a person I knew I could trust, and always has a no bullshit take on everything but has an aabundance of empathy too.

After a crazy 32 U.S.A. state roadtrip (yolo!) Magda & Tamas put me up at their place, Magda cooked me an amazing breakfast before I left the USA for unknowns at home, not knowing whether I’d make it back again.

But the story is more complicated.

Magda nearly saw me go under. A few times.

I just had no energy. I laid in bed. Feeling sorry for myself. I was in pain. I was really sick. I couldn’t even watch Netflix. But Magda & Paulina would send reassuring tweets and emails and I slowly kept it together.

I worked harder at building my art-practice than on anything in my life, though it never felt like work. I devoted myself to it, though it never felt like sacrifice. I am also endlessly grateful. Those years gifted me experiences, skills, lessons, and friendships. I would not be me without them.

Many forget that it’s a rare privilege to find something you care about so deeply and be able to make it your life.

I had struggled to get back, but my heart wasn’t in it in the same way. I simply craved a new challenge. It didn’t matter why — I couldn’t lead my life in the same way, and I had promised myself that I wouldn’t be caught without a plan if something happened to me again.

I realized I couldn’t have my old life back, but I also didn’t want it anymore.

So I decided to go into healthcare… radiotherapy & oncology! Of all things. But I’d kept all this secret from most people. It was furtive, shadowy work, and the secrets made my stomach ache.

But I reached out to M, and I hoped that she would still think I was an okay person.

The wild thing is, Magda still helped me through emails – giving me incredible advise and inspiration for my healthcare practice. To the point that I realized that I was still a fucking artist. I had got lost, but she never stopped helping me find the tracks back. I’m now doing my PhD combining all of my double agent status’ together. Just insane.

But here’s the thing about the Postmasters Fam., is that they don’t let you down.

Magda once said to me that we get dealt the cards that we get dealt, but we play them like they’re fucking Aces. She has taught me that experience is subjective. We get to decide what’s devastating, what’s beautiful, and what we do next. In the books of our lives, we are both protagonist and narrator. And narrators have incredible power.

In writing this, I thought a lot about the places that shape us, and how, in turn, we shape those places in our minds. Postmasters have really shaped my life, in so many ways.

As human beings living on earth right now, we find ourselves in a very particular where. The art-world mostly sucks, because it works for the 1%, lets not even talk about politics.

But this is something we can all help, maintain, and be a part of. Help sustain the legacy, help to make the future, help to secure a better history. Look down at your feet and decide what that means.

Instead of being afraid, I’m going to try to be brave. Instead of feeling regret, I’m going to focus on getting better tomorrow, and instead of hoping that someone else will say it or move it or mean it, I’m going to do it myself.

Postmasters has been there for us (in ways you might not even know yet!) so lets me THERE FOR THEM!

Today, after 9-10 days of a horrific infection, I found myself feeling human enough to do some actual work. We’re organizing a conference about art and visibility, my PhD friends and I. More info coming soon! So I started writing the stuff we need to move forward today.

But what it made me think about was visibility within healthcare, and illness, and art.

I started thinking about Greenberg ( visibility of the aesthetics of experience), – and then about the Cubists and other Post-Impressionists perspectives being particularly poignant for illness and suffering.

But contemporarily, how are we and can we understand someone else’s pain or convey our own to others? How do we make sense of the nonsensical, whether the chaos of life-as-lived or the inscrutability of dying? How do we answer the questions “Why me?” and “Why now?” when we are diagnosed with disease? How do we paint what we know is there but cannot see? These are heavy questions which lie sullen at the bottom of every action within my PhD enquiry. Modern medicine, like much pre-Impressionistic art, tried to square this circle by instituting a technical and professional gaze that filters out the ephemera of the individual in order to identify and name what is hidden by opaque bodies (see, of course, Foucault 1994).

But this is not arts aim; it’s not a reductive attempt to discover the building blocks common to all landscapes or buildings or humans or musical instruments. It’s to uncover the essence of a thing, that particular thing, in order to reveal more.

Our representations of disease may actually conceal even as they seek to reveal. We know that socioeconomics and other social determinants (e.g., discrimination, exposure to violence, lack of education and social support, etc.) are tied to health and risk of illness and disease. We also know that socioeconomics and other social determinants affect prognosis and recovery. (Read Michael M’s The Health Gap for more of this)

Although the media love to highlight the enemy on our borders threatening to disrupt our safe worlds insulated from many of the realities of danger and suffering, it is actually our capacity for self-destruction that constitutes our greatest foe: poverty, poor nutrition, lack of access to care, neglect of mental illness, climate change, and war, both declared and undeclared. But far easier to wind up a distant epidemic and see a remote danger to ourselves (while thousands die in a distant place) than address our real threats. Despite many genuine humanitarian responses from wealthier “first-world” countries, it is still clear that we have primitive protective responses (at home and abroad) that largely ignore the real wolves at the door.

As the NHS looms on a crisis that was caused my a greedy, beaurocratic , irresponsible government, and Brexit heightens tensions, and Donald Trump’s inauguration starts to truly loom ahead, I got thinking.

Thinking about all of this, I wonder if art is our tool to help both recognize suffering but also help build bridges with communities we have trouble connecting with due to these issues. If the digital world fosters isolation, what evokes empathy? Which of our personas do we believe in—our social media portraits or our reflections in the mirror? What are the consequences of a digitally-created society in the psyche of the global community? Art *can* cross boundaries, social class, geolocked nations. It exists in between physical, real and the social-digital world. It links us through history, makes the other seem friendly, it can hold up a mirror when everything else seems shattered and untrue. Art explores the complicated yet timeless questions of influence, superficiality, and powerlessness.

When I was first an art-student, I remember finding and learning all about this activist art history. From Ad Reinhardt creating “communist” comics under a false name and being investigated by the FBI, to more direct examples such as the Gorilla Girls, and PAD-D groups. They made work with a political edge. It was so exciting! I wondered about how awesome it would have been, to be growing up in such a polarized and politically difficult time and then being involved in such grassroots political activity and art being the tool, or the process. Almost a license to get it out there and be archived for the future. But that same political drive, was also given to the artworld too – Gregory Scholette of PAD-D continues writing about art and political activism with his artwork representing his ideals and holding the artworld accountable for its Dark Matter, Reinhardt wrote lots of essays – as published in “Art as Art” with his disgust of the commercialization of art.

Of course, now I found myself, in a much different world than 8 years ago where hope resided, and people were less obvious and less aggressive with their hate. Where politically, things all felt relatively stable and fine. I have since lost my political art naivety that I had then, and I don’t feel the same excitement as I did when I first found it —- but what does remain is my gut feeling that art CAN make a difference, and my passion in the use of criticality esp within a political art canon. Art can be urgent and important and poignant.

I wonder about all of these experiences, and lessons. And I think – yeah, it’s our turn to make the invisible – visible. We are traumatized witnesses, some of us accomplices, groping about in the gap between passive outrage and mobilized action. We are both: perpetrators and victims, objects and subjects endlessly exchanging roles.

It’s our turn to show that mirror to those who can’t see a reflection. It’s our turn to help people practice empathy, to feel less powerless, to make people accountable, to stand up for what is right – and I think it’s about time the artworld got out of it’s comfort zone.

I’m not sure what that looks like for me. Some artists are already doing it. But our Art is about changing the world, rather than study how it is. It’s not just about making things, but making things happen. There is much proof out there that our common community has not been relinquished.

Is art sufficient to the task of unpacking these contradictions that lie within our society – or should it complicate matters further? Such questions are unanswerable, but we shall see and we shall do.

Around 5 years ago, my life changed in a fatal kind of way. When I was in America, I was given a diagnosis that made feel like I was looking down a barrel of a gun and made me question everything in my life. This crazy plot twist, that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Tramedy, set off a bunch of things in my life. The past 4-ish years have been personally-health-awful, but yet through this difficult time this happened:

Last night I picked up my crazy amazing big prestigious award from the Houses of Commons, like some kind of rock-star. It was surreal, and I’ll probably never get another opportunity to experience something like it. But it was such an incredible evening and I met so many amazing, talented, smart, giving and generous people who work within healthcare, specifically within radiography and oncology care. We should be so proud to have these people – and people not acknowledged working day in and out within the NHS just like them – and in our country.

It’s more than anyone could ask for and it’s an absolute rare privilege; To be recognized for trying your best to help others. I’ve never really been acknowledged before, but I can’t help but feel heavy with gratitude to everyone who got me here, as thanked previously in many, many blog posts previously. Because this award is just representative of everyone who got me here. There is no greater gift than being able to be part of something bigger than yourself, trying to make things better for others. And so the honour of being part of narrative alone is incredible.

Then I got home, back to the north, anxious about the U.S.A. Elections, fell asleep and awoke to Trump president-elect.

When I fell sick, I had so much angst because I felt like there was so much left to do and so much more love to give in life. I’d cry because I felt sorry for myself. And I felt ashamed even more for behaving that way, for being weak. But then on reflection I realized that the tears flowed because they needed to. Because things were building up instead of me like a pressure cooker, and I wanted to keep moving forward.

I was crying because I wanted to live, because I was afraid of not being here. And I was afraid of being forgotten.

So having gone through that, and 2015 UK General Election and Brexist Ref vote – I figured we need a hope-of sorts – a plan of sorts. Here’s what I’ve learnt from my few years living invisibly and wanting so bad to enjoy life again. And how Brexit, and Trump and a million refugees stuck around the world make you feel powerless and everything is lost. But

Trust me when I say this time is short & this life is both terrible & beautiful.

Resentment & anger are inevitable & sometimes are important, temporarily, but it’s important to not take up residence in that place. I PROMISE you deserve better. Even if you voted Trump. You do deserve better.

I promise you there are people who will leave you in life, but that others will embrace you unconditionally in your brokenness.

So you go out & run fearlessly in the direction of love. You are never alone. Your tribe is out there. GO GET IT. And please keep laughing. Joy is salvation. In the darkest, lowest moments, being able to find something, anything to laugh about can save you.

We never stop. We never give up. We fight for each other and protect each other.

Living and giving kindness is the best revenge.

The most creative challenge of our lives is learning how to approach our own inner darkness with curiosity, empathy, and friendliness.

And that’s where it’s all going to come together.

Sometimes in life, if you are very lucky, you find the grace in having it all blow up in your face.

Our jobs for the day (life): Tell the truth; Be kind & curious; Love all people with all your heart; Don’t put up with any bullshit.

Love Is Love Is Love, we’ve had a bunch of set-back but that just means we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us but lets keep working to make things better – for ourselves and for those who are voiceless, victimised, invisible or who can’t say it for themselves. There is so much more that what unites us than what divides us.

Our work isn’t done, and we need each other and others less fortunate than us, who are REALLY struggling need us. So don’t wait to be called, because you’re already being beckoned.

Last week I had my first medium-plus allergic reaction to Shellfish (I think). I didn’t even eat it, I just ate rice that had been cooked with it. The kicker is, I don’t even LIKE Shellfish.

Literally within an hour my face swelled up (not like Hitch style but pretty bad never the less) & my throat became ridiculously itchy & sore, and I became wheezy like when you have an asthma attack. Needless to say, i wasn’t best impressed with this new hyper-sensitive immune system of mine. I hadn’t been to see a doctor in literally months, and i was hoping to keep it that way. Damn.

I had to go to the urgent care center, where I was given steroids, more anti-histamines, and a GP appointment. My GP prescribed me my first EpiPen, and a referral to an immunologist.

Today I picked up my EpiPen. I’ve never seen one up close before.

My GP gave me strict instructions about how to use it, & that I can see the practice nurse to show me how, and that I should call an ambulance if i use it & that I’ll always have to carry it and anti-histamines with me for the rest of my life now “just incase”.

But what struck me was the design of it.

It’s really quite big! And I wonder how smaller people (kids etc) carry their EpiPens about if they don’t bring a backpack? Its design is a bit impractical. They’re reliable, sure. They’ll buy a patient who’s in the midst of a severe allergic reaction a few crucial minutes to make their way to the hospital.

But they’re also bulky. Their epinephrine solution isn’t particularly shelf-stable, and will easily degrade in temperatures that are too low or too high (too cold in a bag in the winter? too hot in a jeans pocket perhaps?) and its expiry date on mine is in about a years time. So not very long.

I had a quick google to see if there was other designs available. In America, there was 100s of news articles on the esculating price tag: apparently a pack of two EpiPens now lists for $608 in the USA. (I checked the cost for the NHS & it’s £23.99 for 1 single dose).

This revealed that there’s a design patent on it until 2025. One company owns the monopoly of the EpiPen. & because of this, the design flaws of it for the user, are the profit for company. If it’s too big to carry, you’re more likely to buy more (in the US anyways) to store in other places or for back-ups.

Accidental injections seem pretty common, and instructions are relatively simple, but, adrenaline is invariably used in highly stressful situations, in order to treat a severe allergic reaction. As the auto-injector was originally designed for use in the military, the users were well trained to manage in these circumstances and the user group generally consisted of healthy adult males. Nowadays the devices are given to people of all ages, and with children suffering more from anaphylaxis than any other age group, the device has to be appropriate for a wide range of user groups.

On the recent BBC Radio 4 programme Dr Boyle highlighted how having to respond to a stressful situation can affect the person administering the drug. In his trial, more than half of the intensively trained parents were unable to correctly operate the devices in an emergency.

He cited some of the common errors associated with auto-injectors: holding them the wrong way round, failing to remove the safety cap and not pressing hard enough. They also discussed how little research into the efficacy of the device has been done because studies can cause severe allergic reactions in test subjects, plus real life situations are likely to occur in public and not in clinical settings. All of these issues have resulted in little drive to improve the devices over the last 50 years, leaving key issues unaddressed. (1)

The very fact that the EpiPen has been dominant for so long makes it hard for challengers to come in with a radically different design.

So, what does all of this mean? Well… there’s a HUGE Challenge for someone to make a MASSIVE difference to 1,000’s & 1,000’s of people, but also challenging in being able to design everything that is needed into an EpiPen (engineering, plastics, drugs, function, deisgn, safety etc) that’s life-style-functional & more cost effective long-term (shelf-life etc).

It highlights that instead of trying to carve out a focused segment of healthcare or a specific specialty of design, we should be re-framing these conversations about healthcare improvement around a set of challenges.

No one person or one organization can take on the whole system, but collectively we can make significant, people-centered change happen. I wrote on my blog last night about ‘critical making‘ – If there is one element that is sorely lacking in healthcare, it’s the ability to prototype, to critically make.

It can seem like a beast of a system can healthcare: its big, complex, and delivering on one of the most complex industries. But I’m trying to keep practicing at staying awake and trying to be attentive to what is elusive, fantastic, contingent, different and barely there.

Who knew some Shellfish and an EpiPen experience would be showing me and putting into practice that listening can tell you who you are. That paying attention can give us the change and the meaning that we so badly seek.

This week I was invited to #PatientsAsPartners16 event – It was organized in big part by Roz Davies – as part of Recovery Enterprises in Sheffield, NHS Confederation and Y & H Academic Health Science Network & a bunch of other organizations and people.

Drawing events and workshops and conferences aren’t an unusual thing for me. It’s a huge part of my bread-and-butter. I get to draw all kinda of things! From health & social-care, to technology, the government, to film, to education, to science, to social-media, to inspirational stories. You name it. I’ve had the opportunity to have a good draw of it. And in the 5 years of doing it, I’ve learnt a lot about subjects I never would have ever really thought about before. I’d love to, in the future, write a small book – based on all the things I’ve learnt as this “graphic facilitator”.

But the ‘Patients as Partners’ event and working with Roz again reminded me of where this journey started for me. Back in 2012, I drew a bunch of events for Roz and her colleagues at NHS England. It was all about trying to make the NHS more “people-powered”. We worked with patients and other service users like carers, ensuring they were part of the new design of PCTs turning into CCGs in march 2013. That the patient expertise and experience was central and a big part of helping local CCGs commission services that reflect the needs of their local community and patients. That hopefully patients would be partners in this process, and not just an “involve a service user tick box” process.

And these “lay-members” and other patients relayed their experiences of having to navigate this fragmented system that just didn’t understand their needs – even though these needs represent the same needs of 1000’s more living with the same specific chronic medical conditions. And this misunderstanding, or even rejection of their needs, even though not done on purpose or without care – was the start of a scaring and traumatic time for these people. But they didn’t give up. They used their resilience to push forward new ideas, and new ways of working. Or setting things up to help others in similar positions. They learnt everything they could, they tried to redesign the system.

I had just started my medical journey at around the same time. And in the beginning it was fine, but the longer I was in this limbo position – the more I hated being a patient. I still hate it, probably even more. I feel judged, in not a good way. I feel ashamed – of myself for not being able to fix what’s happening, for not being stronger. I’m spoken to like I’m stupid. Healthcare professionals (worth noting not all of them, of course) say loaded sentences to me – try and blame things on me because I am “young and female” – seriously -. I feel bad for not fitting into the [healthcare] system (story of my life). I’m an issue, not an assest. I’m “complex in the way I present”. It’s so loaded. I’m complex because I’m a human being and we are complex creatures, no? Healthcare professionals can’t wait to discharge me – with no solutions or suggestions or even help. And I just think, my poor poor GP.

(I want to say that as noted in many posts that I have been shown incredible care & kindness by most HCPs and I think the NHS is phenomenal and has saved me in many ways – but that doesn’t mean there’s not issues or unkind words in the process)

And as someone who intrinsically makes connections across fields, knowledge, see how things are linked, no matter how big or small those connection are, who loves working with people, and coming up with creative ways – or trying new things/ways of seeing if something works. I find this whole process really rigid and foreign & I can’t understand why it’s like that? Because surely, people aren’t like this?!

And as a result of this old school way, I’m left completely alone. In constant pain – causing unnecessary health problems for future smizz as I try and figure out whether different things/medications/diets/ect will work. I’d be lying if this experience hasn’t made me Question the value and the worth of my own life. I’m often left feeling like I’m not even worth the time of the system because I’m complex and they’re not understanding how it has all affected me. Having to “live with it” without any direction, advice – or even hope – in what to do to help or move forward. It’s really, really hard.

Luckily, the struggle is my life. And I’m motivated by experience to try and make things better. And whilst I’d rather not have this pain and experiences, it makes me more empathetic to others struggles.

So, drawing all these events – where we’re trying to change culture, to redesign things so that actually we have care – not a just a stop and fix and go system – really resonated with me. And I thought if these people (patients) are using their experiences to make and design new things to compliment the system — then maybe I can use my own experience and my intuitive knowledge/creativity to be a better healthcare professional – and change the system that way. One -on One. Person by person. Making sure people feel listened to. Not judge anyone. And understand that sometimes it’s the really small things that make the biggest differences to someone, so not to just make assumptions. 3 years on, 7 weeks before I qualify, I try and make sure that no one leaves my care without knowing the support, plans and options for them going forward, and i always try and make sure they know that they can come back – – with questions, concerns, ideas. ect.

So that’s why I retrained. Due to hearing all these stories and seeing the virtue of human resilience. Not to back down, to help healthcare to become more than just instruction-based (practice, protocols) but also idea-based (critical thinking, envision ideas of others).

And the artist in me is integral to the process of helping to do this. Patients as Partners discussed how we need to be more creative. We need to help people understand. We need to re-design new pathways, processes, community links, use peoples knowledge from lived experiences. Nightingale showed that soldiers weren’t dying mainly on the battlefield, but instead they were dying in the hospitals due to the poor sanitary conditions there. Nightingale used this now famous diagram to influence hygiene practices in military hospitals, which resulted in lower mortality rates. The kind of design that Nightingale used can be thought of as, “Design to improve understandability.”

For the past few years there’s been debate about healthcare reform. But for all the talk of funding and not being able to afford to do things, there’s a lot less talk about the stories and lives of the people who are the center: patients and HCP. And I believe art/design/creativity is going to help us bring the people, their knowledge, their experiences and co-produce things that matter and bring the people who matter to the center of it all (Although NHS does need WAY more funding, there’s no denying this ).

It’s hard to believe that 2012, doing the People Powered NHS and doing the Patient as Partners event in 2016 – of how much it has come together, of how much it has inspired my journey and thought process. And if that’s not proof that peoples stories can help change things and help us learn, help us to empathize, and grow – then I don’t know what is.

There remains a misconception that health is determined by health care. Through hoping to change things through art/design/creativity we can make cities healthier, we can involve the people who it affects, and learn from what helps/makes them worse, we can make people feel more empowered & valued, and in turn we can make people’s jobs feel more satisfied. And we will make the healthcare system more sustainable and caring in the process. And make society healthier and better in the long run.

It sounds all a bit grandiose but actually, after years of listening to people not giving up and showing how they’ve helped to change things locally and beyond through their lived experiences. It’s hard to ignore and not feel inspired. Hold onto ideas, esp when they’re considered risky. We can totally lasso the moon. I’m almost sure of it.

This is a great project that showcases the above: http://www.recoveryenterprises.co.uk/about/

Patients as Partners project will be written up into a report with recommendations.

Being freelance and working from home, I slowly turned into a sucker for cooking shows like Masterchef, The Great British Bake-Off, The Taste, Come-Dine-With me, and almost anything on the Food Network. No cooking show was too long or too low-brow and underproduced for me. I thought it was probably an age thing – I never watched this stuff when I was younger: turned out it was just a love of different foods (probs due to aging-maturity) but I think it was more to do with avoiding doing work/relaxation thing. This became clearer as a healthcare student – I watched these shows even more religiously. The MasterChef series is ALWAYS on when I’m trying to revise for exams or have 100 deadlines. Trying to avoid reality.

One day after clinical placement, my housemates and I sat down with our food to eat and watch food on the TV. This was a show about a bunch of chefs trying to make it in this Italian restaurant/bakery engrained in tradition and processes. One of the young chefs tries to take a bunch of short-cuts and the older chefs catches him – and tells him off – saying, “that’s not how we do it here! We do it the long, hard, stupid way”. Which is stuff like not using yesterdays bread, making fresh new bread instead, making the soup from scratch. ect ect.

And this really stuck with me. The Long-Hard-Stupid-Way.

I think I do everything the long, hard, stupid way. I often get told this. If there’s an easy or a hard way – you can guarantee that i’ll find the hardest way first. My mom says it’s because I don’t have any common sense.

But I started thinking about the routes I’ve taken to get where I am now. And I wonder if I could take an easier path – would i have taken it? The answer is probably no. And I started finding pleasure in reflecting upon this rough, hard-stupid-way path.

There’s a whole spectrum of – here’s the long hard stupid way – which is ultimately the way I seem to be compelled to make & do things, and then at the other end we have super efficient way over there.

When you work the long hard stupid way – it looks a lot like worrying, scratching new ideas, endless notebooks, trying to learn things you’d never dream of doing before, it’s a lot of others looking at you like you’ve got it wrong, it’s staying up late and then having to get up early the next day (killer), it’s not returning your library books on time, but all of these actions are inspired by just caring a lot.

That’s not to say you can’t be efficient and not care deeply – but i, personally, don’t know how to do that.

But behind the long-hard-stupid way is a gift. It’s a lot of heart.

It’s staying up late, and sketching out plans and learning how to code smart-phone apps (FYI – it’s not the same as making a website which I originally thought it would be. Just because you know italian doesn’t mean you’ll be able to speak french), and taking the time to make it – without ever thinking about having a plan to make it accessible. Turns out making apps is a rollercoaster.

It’s going through a really testing health-issue, that literally breaks who you are – and makes you question everything you are & your worth– and going through the system that doesn’t know what to do with you – because you’re not a child and not an old adult – and instead of being a normal person and try and change the system from the outside, you decide to re-train and try to make the difference yourself, inside the system.

It’s deciding to apply for things you’ll probably never get accepted to do – for the love of learning new things, and the process, and meeting new people – & ultimately hoping that the rejection and the attempt itself will lead to more change and things to build upon for the future.

And most of all, it’s deciding to do all of it together – at once. Long-hard-stupid-way.

Freelancing is often the long-hard-stupid-way. You’re never sure how much work you’re ever going to get. So you just say yes to pretty much everything, just on the off chance you hit a lull and therefore you’ll still have some money coming in. All the while – burning yourself out. The thing is, you always work more hours than you get paid to work. Life-work balance is hard to strike. And you can never officially take a sick day.

Working alone is hard. Being your own investor is hard (& stupid sometimes). And running all of these things together – teaching, app making, website designing, conference drawing, illustration commissioning, clinical-student-ing, academic-working – all while feeling crappy & being broke- is super long, hard & stupid – and to do it responsibly is even harder.

Learning to work your life-balances out is hardwork. And it’ll probably take you some long-hard-stupid-ways before you know when is the right time to say yes and when to say no. A friend of mine when i was feeling so awful from fatigue & I felt like i was letting people down told me – you gotta say no if you really want to say yes.

Would i have ever wanted to go straight into healthcare from school? The answer would have been hell-naw. I didn’t have the empathy. I didn’t have the experiences I have now. I needed to experience the hardship to gain the drive.

So even though the long, hard, stupid way is just that, what it produces is something cool. When we work this way, it sort of gains an empheral quality. It’s sort of in the air – everything always feels up in the air. Whenever we make things this way – either for ourselves or for other people. There’s some kind of value in that. And that value exists outside of commericalization or money. And I love that. It sort of becomes a gift.

The thing with gifts is that – you have to be given a gift. You can’t ask for one. The more a gift moves, the more value it gains (has it been passed on through the family, does it fill a gap – a representation of a bond, is it using someones time) — like wise – the more work you put into something – the more value is gained. Ultimately a gift is a sacrifice.

Essentially the best work I do is when I say something or do something or give something , to really help people (in every/any way), or to people I really care about.

But the biggest potential is that – Doing things the long, hard, stupid way – you learn all sorts (mostly wrong things) – but you get a gift. Or you create a gift for others.

It’s that you can build a foundation or something for people. My practice is driven by my belief in making things for other people. Whether that’s making time to listen and to help, making something to make people think, making something that will better their experience, making something that brings people together, to make someone laugh or feel heard. By making something for other people, by considering someone else it moves the edges of our beings closer together and we gain more overlap in the process.

And we should look at these overlaps, to talk to each other. to know what we all have in common and to create more situations to create more commonalities. And by doing this we can some how grasp the wonder that is so hard to grasp – of what lies in the heart of making – and making things the long, hard, stupid way.

And when I think about all the awful things this government is doing and pushing through – from ruining the NHS, and demoralizing Junior Doctors, to entrenching a future generation in 50,000 + debt for education, to cruel benefit changes, to making students criminals if they can’t pay back their student loan immediately after they’ve finished university, to trying to get rid of our human rights, to airstriking syria, to stopping free dinners for children who can’t afford to eat. It makes me so, so, so angry. And even helpless.

But the long, hard, stupid way is all about continuing to try, push and make something – we don’t care about barriers – or the challenges – or even the outcome: the gift that comes out of making things for others shows and says for us to stop, look and look around us. It says everything is possible again. And the world isn’t yet done.

If we can find the courage, and the strength to make things (whatever that is) for others, we can give these gifts back to one another. There’s so much more what unites us than what separates us. People power goes a long way – even if its the long, hard, stupid way.

Medicine develops so fast, especially radiotherapy. But one of the areas we’ve not caught up with and developed is the design of healthcare. I know what you’re thinking. What’s art & design got to do with anything in healthcare, really? And if you’re thinking this – this basically uncovers one of the reasons why design is an issue – because no one is thinking about it.

Last year I made the first Radiotherapy Patient Information Smartphone app. RADcare. Just me. I drew it out on paper – big sheets of A3, pages and pages – in the library and in Starbucks, I read paper after paper on patient informational needs, scoped out what is already out there, thought about the pathway and critically reflected my time as a patient and doing first-day chats on clinical placement. After being a patient (not a radiotherapy one) I’ve always felt that patient information – from the letters that you get from hospitals with appointments on, to medical procedures to be flat, lacking in information that you actually need (Like where do you check in? ) and just depersonalised. If you actually get anything at all. Visually, they’re not very good either. It’s no wonder most people don’t read the material we give them. It looks about as enticing as getting a filling done at the dentist.

Then there’s the issues of – how one leaflet can’t really fit all. It can’t offer all the information you might want to know, it may also be in a format that isn’t accessible for people – like literacy is an issue.

And yet the government wants us to be more proactive with our self care – using the internet to try and gauge what we have is important enough to visit our doctors. But here in lies another patient information problem. We don’t know how reliable websites are for healthcare data and information. So when a patient, or a family member/service user, wants to find out more information about their treatment – they end up in a sea of vague, out of date, in accurate, non-protocol information.

So I designed this prototype smartphone app. I wanted it to be everything current patient information is not. Accessible. Even a bit cute. Detailed – but you have a choice on how much detail you want to access. And colourful. A mixture of formats – from animations, videos and text. And most of all – more personable with a bit of heart. I wanted to break all the corporate rules.

Whilst it’s so important to do your user-research first, and make the UX design user-friendly first before design aesthetics – I prepared it with research and aesthetics first. I knew that the coding stuff (I need someone to make it work better than my amateur coding can do) can be fixed later.

And Ku hits the nail on the head perfectly. I’m passionate about using art processes in innovating healthcare and it’s design away from mediocre. I jumped ship from art to healthcare to use my passion of trying to eradicate social-injustices and inequalities to try and make the patient pathway better. I know, from my work with NHS England and other healthcare organizations, that creative methods – from drawing patient’s experiences, and filming their life – are great and affective ways to make the patient feel heard and valued – and as a result – you produce something with much more worth and use. Because it was built with the experience of the people using that service/prototype/leaflet.

I think part of the worry with using more creative ways of designing healthcare comes from healthcare’s obsession with measuring outcomes. In a scientific way, too. This culture needs to be adapted – not just for innovation but also for our practitioners whose continuity of care doesn’t get acknowledged. That extra 10 minutes spent with a patient – with no boxes to tick to get measured – but it made a massive difference for the practice and the patient.

But how do you evaluate the use of creative ways effectively? How do you measure them? Is small-scale testing enough? It’s a mine-field.

So I hope you’ll help me. I wanted to try and use my app as part of my dissertation — just so my spare-time project gets some academic acknowledgement. I’m doing a design evaluation of the app – and I’ll be putting key-parts of the design online with some questions and one-on-one interviews. If you want to help me evaluate the design — i would be extremely grateful.

If you want to help me – I would love to hear from you! – holla at me on Twitter, or by email smizz@sarahsmizz.com

If you have any cool articles about heathcare & designing/art – i’d love to know about them too.

And if you’re passionate about making a difference, or about art& design and health care too – Let’s share an email or grab a coffee.

The Tory government believe that Nursing students (And I’m sure it will then lead onto other allied health care professional courses such as Radiotherapy, radiography, physiotherapy, ect) don’t need a NHS Bursary to help them fund their course and cost of living.

And they’re so wrong believing this. It’s just another way to repress the NHS as we know it. And it’s bad for these reasons.

Firstly, I would never – EVER – have had the opportunity to go to university if I got no maintenance grant (for a normal – fine art course). I entered university in the first year that tuition “top-up” fees came into play. Now, I had no sense of money so the debt didn’t really worry me too much. And I still don’t have any money. But I came from a family that had NO money too. I was brought up below the poverty line. No one in my family has any qualifications. There were about 12 out of my 6th form (of 250+ students) who went onto university in the area i’m from. Are you sensing all this lower-social-economic working class, less privileged stuff here?

My mom jumps from minimum wage temp job to temp job. Ruining credit scores after credit scores – but we get by. Thanks to door-step loans and borrowing from my nan – back and forth.

When I went to university the first time – I kept a bunch of part time jobs, I had the summer to earn more money. I would wire my mom extra money to help her out too. I didn’t get ANY help. I worked in the USA on unpaid internships because I worked in the bookies in my spare time. I left university 4 years later with a debt of around £23,000. That was my tuition fees & living loan. I had also got a maintenance grant and a university bursary. And I can’t believe ‘normal degree students’ won’t get that in the future now either. I didn’t party too much, but I had to go to London a lot as part of my course and art materials and an art degree show is expensive to put on. But I made ends meet and I don’t ever remembering feeling like I was truely money screwed. But I lived in my overdraft. I didn’t care. It was free.

Fast forward to right now.

I’m in my last year of my 3 year Radiotherapy & Oncology degree. And I CONSTANTLY feel like I don’t have enough money to survive.

I’m doing this degree because after a horrific health experience I wanted to both give back to the NHS that has saved my life, and given me so much in compassion and help. It rocked my world-view. Falling sick changed who I was as a person and my old life just didn’t fit in the way it did before. But it was also really important to me to enhance patient care further, to get rid of those moments of care where I felt misunderstood as a patient and not really listened to. Sometimes we all just need to be listened to, even if there’s nothing you can do about the issue at hand. And there’s so many systems and pathways that can be made so much better.

And so, I thought that the NHS could do with someone like me, someone who had already done work with patient experience, who can empathize what my patients are experiencing, who thrives on doing a great job and helping people, making things, and whose passion for social justice and a better society motivates everything I do.

But falling ill had made me even more strapped for cash. I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t do my freelance job. I lost work, I lost hope. For a whole year. When I decided that studying radiotherapy would also be good for me as a coping mechanism and as a routine to get me back to functioning in the real world – to make me feel a bit human again and to understand the system that I loved and hated – i knew because my course was funded by the NHS I could ‘afford’ to do it. This was a hoop that wasn’t going to hinder me. I wasn’t discriminated against because I didn’t come from money. If that bursary wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do it.

But here’s the thing. The NHS Bursary barely covers living costs anyways. And they want to chop it?

Being a healthcare student isn’t like being a ‘normal course’ student. On my art course, we started late September, had a few essays, researched a lot, constantly worked (though this wasn’t logged) in the studio (realtively stress free) and you’d have a few assessments and shows along the way. You made it what it needed to be. As time consuming or dedicated as you wanted. We’d have a nice christmas break, and a nice Easter break. No exams. We’d break up for the whole summer around May time. And the cycle would happen again. I could work weekends if i wanted to because i did all my work during the week. I could work evenings because – well – i could go and work in the studio whenever it suited me. I had 4 months of potential time to save up from a part-time job and/or get extra experience in my area.

A healthcare course is much, much, much more and very different. We work 35+ hours a week on clinical practice. Helping patients, cleaning and setting up equipment, cleaning up patients, letting them cry on you. You, as students, do carry quite a bit of the work – that keeps the NHS moving. But you’re being watched, constantly. You have this constant feeling of stress because you know you need something clinical ticked off, or you need to do more case reports, or case discussions/clinical examinations, you’re constantly being stretched and observed and building your professional knowledge, confidence and persona. And it’s not like the art studio, if I mess up – i can’t just come back to it, it’s someone’s life it’s affecting. Add 1-2 hours of commuting to work each way. And then time for cooking tea and tomorrows lunch. Then add on ALL of the academic work that you need to do that night and get up and go to work the next day again.

You have ePortfolio, exams, assignments after assignments, clinical competencies, IPE, dissertation, more exams. And you work ALL summer too. No Camp America for you. This is all on top of 35+ hours. But guess what, if you was doing a business degree, or a marketing or computer science degree with a work placement – You’d be paid for your work placement. What about us?

What about this Bursary?

Unlike normal degree students – healthcare students get sent across the region and the country for their clinical practice. They can be in Doncaster one placement and then in Sheffield the other. On my course people can be placed as far as Newcastle and Leister. Commuting from your house in Sheffield to Newcastle is probably going to be a no go. So guess what, you have to pay for 2 rents – often UP FRONT – out of your own money. But get this. That NHS Bursary barely covers your Sheffield rent anyways. Where are you going to get this extra cash from? How are you going to eat? How can you afford the bus to work? Sometimes it’s just cheaper to rent a place then it is to actually take public transport (which is pretty horrific) If like me, you’re just a poor kid from the Donx, whose mom can barely pay her own rent anyways, where do you get this extra money from? What happens if you’re a parent? What do you do then?

Then lets consider all this academic work on top of your clinical placement rota. Each 20 credit module equals 200 hours of study or teaching. Since you’re on clinical practice, that 200 hours is your own study time. But you’ve already worked 8 hours that day, you get home around 6-ish if you’re lucky. You need to do that work. What employer is going to be that understanding of your dodgy work pattern? And you’re probably going to be REALLY tired after finishing a whole day of clinical placement ontop a whole shift at Boots, then go home and try to do some ePortfolio and do this ALL again. And people DO IT. That’s not the debate. But could you do it if that bursary wasn’t there at all? i don’t think so.

When you get a NHS bursary (which FYI is at the most around £380 a month) you don’t get any extra help from the university like you do on a ‘normal course’. You’re exempt from quite a few hardship funds in place within the university. And student loans will only lend you up to £2,200 a year – max. You have to work clinical placement all summer remember too.

Then lets consider all these extra costs which you won’t think about.

Your uniform has to be clean on each day. That’s 5 days of washing straight up. It’s white – that’s an extra load of washing. If you’re living in student accommodation – your washing is going to run you around 5-10 extra pound a week. You’re working all week, and there’s something about clinical placement which makes you WAY more hungrier than in real life. And hospital canteen food is ridiculously expensive – so you have to plan ahead and pay extra in your food shopping to run the costs of a decent packed lunch to get you through the working day. There’s all the extra things too. You want to be ahead of the game for ePortfolio and job hunting – you need to go to conferences – often way expensive – even for students. But that’s part of your professional conduct and identity. Then you have your normal course costs. Really expensive course text books.

Then if you’ve survived all of this, and get to the end of the course and want to get a job. You have to pay for a licence to practice and a membership to your college of your profession to ensure you have insurance – before you’ve even got a job, a pay-check. This is around £380 before you’ve even started. I have no idea at this point where my money will come from to pay for that. We’ll see.

I’m lucky because I’m poor I get the full bursary. Others aren’t but their parents don’t help them out because they can’t afford to either. Many student accommodations are over £4000 a year rent now, which is more than your years bursary.

I work as a freelance artist so most of the time i can work within my own time-frames. However my health still sucks balls. I struggle with fatigue like you wouldn’t believe. So often I get home, and all I do is sleep. It makes doing my school work even harder on top of trying to do freelance work too. But I consider myself one of the lucky ones.

Others aren’t that lucky. Despite having my bursary and working my freelance jobs – i’m talking many jobs too – I barely make ends meet. I’ve ruined my credit score on this degree even further than before. I’ve got to the end of my over-draft and even had my card declined. That never happened to me before. But it’s because I’m paying up front for rents, for train tickets for clinical placement. For food that’s not covered by my loans.

Healthcare students don’t fit your normal format. Most enter the degree much older than your average student population. Many have children and family. They need this bursary. They too probably already have a degree like me. Their story is probably similar. They saw a loved one close suffer dilibertating illness that inspired their calling into healthcare; after having children they wanted to become a midwife; or sometimes they just needed time to mature to discover their true calling.

The NHS treats a population as diverse as you can imagine, and it needs staff that represents the population it is treating. We don’t want a select few who can afford to take on the debt or that their parents will pay everything for them. We want them as well as the people who know what it’s like to be down and out on your luck, who know what it feels like to suffer in constant pain, who have children and know what a parent may be thinking, who know how tough times are. We need people who are compassionate, and creative and passionate and brave. And I don’t want them to be priced out.

My mom has always brought me up with the belief that I shouldn’t make money a barrier. This has hindered me in different ways – like buying things I shouldn’t have because I can’t really afford them – but not everyone is brought up with that belief and some people don’t have the emotional or financial support to be able to take a leap and do a course without any Bursary help.

You wouldn’t expect a kid to pay for their apprenticeship- you give them a terrible wage (which FYI- apprentices need to be paid more too). Nursing students, like all healthcare professionals DESERVE a LIVING WAGE. The bursary isn’t a living wage. But it’s something. Taking that away is disrespectful, it doesn’t acknowledge the hardwork and the goodwill that comes with the healthcare courses. The NHS does benefit from students. We don’t ask for much because we’re passionate about making the system better, about caring for society. It’s NOT about money. EVER. But this is forcing people not to have an opportunity, and potentially change the face of the NHS.

The consequences of not having a NHS bursary in nursing are SO much bigger than you’d ever think on first inspection. We’ll loose our social mobility of the profession, the career progression, the mentorship, we’ll loose people applying for the course, and have a shortage ina time that’s already suffering a shortage.

It’s bad news. And it’s not what the NHS stands for. That’s why I am standing with Nurses and all healthcare workers – for both the junior contract and the student nurses bursaries. We’re all one in the NHS. We work across professions and care for our patients and their carers and we need to look out for one another too. To the future of nursing, and all healthcare professions, and our care and the NHS.

It’s kind of exciting not really fitting into pigeon holes. They say I’m a Smizz of all trades, master of none. I’m currently designing and coding an app in my (limited) spare time, which I hope will help to aid patients in having a better patient-centered-care experience. The app hopes to include all the information for their treatment, and later on become interactive- enabling the patient to get the support they really need (financial, emotional, physical, ect) by using a series of questions over a period of time, and documenting how they’re coping/feeling/side-effects, ect. It’s exciting stuff. But learning coding for this is a steep learning curve.

As an intermediate dabbler in website designing and coding, and now embarking on objective-C and swift codes I am no stranger to being able to take a problem and see the inevitable solutions, but also I’m pretty skilled now in being able to hypotheize the potential for disaster – what problems could I run into using a certain code with another, or ethically, or in language, ect. We use this kind of thinking in Healthcare too. It’s figuring out what our best practice is by eliminating all the problems for optimal experience and outcomes. In art, we use these problems too, to breakdown into manageable truths. As a Marxist, I’ve naturally developed a somewhat cynical ability to breakdown systems really easily into oppressive segregations & loopholes & weaknesses.

But thinking like this naturally, or often, comes with its consequences. Your every day problems become disastrous in your mind. I catch myself getting caught up in this mind-set – Unanswered phone calls become bad-news, someone being late becomes a car accident, late arrivals due to delayed trains and buses become missed opportunities. Being poorly and not doing as much as I used to became career stagnation. The omnipresent of ‘but-what-ifs’ continue to grow.

However, now I try and use this unconscious worst-case-scenario as a way to panic myself into action. Rewards come from risk, and a life without risk is a life that’s probably pretty boring.

When I arrived in the land of the ill – i wasn’t sure i was going to survive. It was the worst I’ve ever felt in my life. I made a list of all the things I’d do if I ever recovered. If I got a second chance. I mean, yeah, i had led a pretty interesting life up to that moment, but I had made sacrifices in the present for a future which I had no idea I’d ever get, as we all do. As a patient, I often felt misunderstood. I was demeaned within the healthcare system 1 or 2 times. I felt ashamed for being poorly. (As well as being shown amazing compassion). I could see levels of the system that I knew I could instantly change if I was in the system (such as just simplying listening to the patient, making them feel heard). I also ferociously read everything i could on cancer, & healthcare and compassion. The experience made me want to be the change I so desperately wanted to see as a Patient. I thought, mane, this system needs some more creative/different thinkers! I have this habit of trying to game systems. So when I started to get back onto my feet a little bit, or learning to live with what was happening, I began to realize some of those things on my list. After talking to a lot of people, I realized the potential possibilities so I applied & started my healthcare adventure.

Being told that it looks like you have a malignancy forces you to realize that life can end literally any time. And this quickly changes what you deem worthy of your attention. I was furious at myself for not being as present with friends and family as I should have been. All the nights-out I missed at university, all the times I wasn’t empathetic to my housemate for his anxiety with post-graduation life. I was absolutely Furious! These were things I hadn’t even calculated in my head until I got ill.

The junction between mortality and mundanity is an exquisite source of perspective. I often sit on the bus, watch a sunset and I think about how these boundaries between are treacherous and illusory. It’s hard to gain this kind of perspective, and it’s equally hard not to lose it, not to start slipping back into old habits. Partially for that reason, I enrolled onto my radiation oncology course. I love art, and it makes me happy and fulfils my soul. But I do miss the way people think in art, and the discussions and dialogues when I’m working in healthcare. I miss the playfulness of the every day I had when I was a fulltime artist – but I believe there’s somewhere in between for both areas.

Art makes me the person who doesn’t trust everything I am taught in the healthcare system. Art is the reason why I can understand and empathize with a persons story, with the person and not just the disease that we’re treating. Healthcare makes me appreciate the edges of life, the possibilities, the beauty & tragedy in it. Designing something brings these 2 worlds together for me.

But coding has taught me about action. This is extremely important right now. We are standing in the middle of time, where great injustices go untouched. Architects of the financial melt down continue to swoon with the governments. & yet our laws and governments continue to value capitalism over humanity. Under-funding the NHS, profiting from education, trying to put laws into place to criminalize our movements when we try and mobilise against things that are wrong, cutting funding for those who are in great need of it, where we give up our freedoms, and allow ourselves to be spied on by the NSA, ect all under the guise of protection.

Change doesn’t roll in on inevitability, it comes with continuous struggle.

So, just as I promised my bleeding, puking, bruised former-self, I plan on raging against the bullshit, and make things that can help others, and keep the door open with kindess & listen. I will wander for a while: call this just 1 of many future sabbaticals. Life isn’t linear. Neither is coding, making, changing. In the end, I think my job over-all isn’t healthcare student, nor artist – but to remind myself every day that my time is limited. And so is yours.

As Aaron Swarts used to say, “What is the most important thing you could be working on right now? And if you’re not working on that, why aren’t you?”

Very light muscle weakness, a constant-never-ending headache that refuses to disappear, left facial numbness, drenching nightsweats, bone pain, constant appearances of shingles, heavy, regular nose-bleeds, a fatigue which drags you down & always wins. I tried to accept these changes as subjects of fascination — idiosyncrasies particular to my body. But nothing can prepare you for loosing a little part of yourself, for no justifiable reason.

In my early -to- mid-20’s, I thought I had things figured out. I thought I was invincible, in a normal every day way. I could take another codeine. I could push through the fatigue, the bone pain. But after awhile it gets actually really hard.

It’s very nearly christmas, and all I really want is to feel better again. I know that santa can’t bring me this, but I have learnt that everyday in itself is a gift – however cliched that sounds.

This hasn’t been an easy lesson to learn. And when I reflect over the year or two, or three, my whole life has changed in ways I would have never been able to conceive of – say, 4 years ago. If you had asked me 4 years ago if I was going to be working in Healthcare today, I would have been like – what are you talking about?!

But it was my experiences (both illness & drawing freelance for the NHS), and ultimately having 2 in particular doctors whose care has been inspirational, amongst many, many other amazing healthcare professionals, that pushed me into chasing my new healthcare venture.

I have been shown kindness in ways I never knew existed. We all have those stories of where a teacher has changed your life by believing in you, and taking extra time (I have like 5 of those stories) – if you fall ill, and are lucky enough – you have this story with a doctor, or two.

Like, the time I turned up at my GP (Dr Pieri) twice in one week, begging him to do something about this horrendous one-sided headache that was making me want to cut my face/head off. Twice. I’ve never-ever done this before but I was getting desperate – (it’s no ordinary headache) – and I needed to get back to just mild-medium pain to function relatively normally. I felt so ashamed of myself and guilty for going twice in one week, what a waste of his time? Who did I stop from seeing him? What will he think of me? I’m the reason why primary practice is struggling.

But he offered no judgement upon me. I got him to check my ears, maybe it’s an ear infection I mused? We both knew it wasn’t. But he checked for me because he knew that even though it wouldn’t help me directly, it would ease just a little bit of my suffering. After checking my ears and saying “nope” out aloud, he put his hand on my shoulder for a moment. It was a hand of compassion. He gave me something for migraines and told me to call him with whether it worked. It didn’t, so I never called him. But I appreciated it in so many different ways.

A few weeks ago, I was seeing my endocrine consultant. I told him the usual, symptoms that he had no interest in – that couldn’t be explained by his field. He asked me if I had got back in touch with my other doctor, as he had wrote to me in August. I hadn’t actually received the letter – so I hadn’t replied to accept his help. My heart jumped, i sat up straight and at the end of my chair trying to peer at the upside down letter in my file. I was impressed that I hadn’t been forgotten about. The endocrine doc said, “Dr. Kersh has spent a lot of time thinking about all of this & trying to figure something out for you. He’s actually probably one of the only doctors who is actually interested.” This I already knew, but even this doctor was impressed with the extra time/help I was getting.

I’m a curve ball. I needed someone to game the system for me. I felt like I just needed someone to try. Someone who could understand just how delibertating this whole thing is, how I no longer feel like myself, how every day I feel like a hungover – windows computer full of malware and viruses. Dr Kersh made/makes me feel like I’m heard and understood, and what a gift to have – to make people feel less alone.

These 2 stories are just 2 tiny examples of the amount of care, kindness, generosity, compassion and time I’ve been given that I am forever grateful for. The extra time they’ve given me which no doubt made their clinics late, breaks probably missed, all the extra paperwork they’ve had to write, all the referrals they’ve had to justify. Words can’t match my appreciation of these people’s hardwork – the care they give to almost strangers – and I don’t want it go unnoticed.

Their actions inspired me to get into healthcare. As an artist, all I ever wanted to do was make a positive difference, and help rectify social injustices. I soon realized that actually healthcare is a place where this all comes together.

Anton Boisen (1960) coined an approach to care that is person-centred. From Boisen’s perspective, the patient is seen as a ‘living human document’, where practitioners learn about dealing with illness by listening to, and studying, the responses of their patients. It’s person-centred in that it identifies the sacredness of the lived human experience and the wisdom found in ‘authentic experiences’ as patients respond and try to come to terms with the vulnerability, anxiety or other existential concerns that may arise in connection with their illness (Devenny, 2013). This completely resonated with me and my care.

It’s weird navigating the system as both patient and healthcare professional in-training. But I feel like I’m in the best place – I can now empathize with suffering which I didn’t before. I just knew it from a system, logical perspective – but now I know it, acutely. I’m left wondering what is the relationship between empathy and understanding?

In the end, I don’t know if the old Smizz will ever return; I feel profoundly, unmistakably different and broken in a way that’s hard to describe. But when I think about all the help I’ve been given by the super smart, funny, and personable compassionate doctors ( Dr Rod Kersh & Dr marco Pieri) it still takes my breath away when I think about it. I’m not just lucky that I have been given this compassionate care, but I’m lucky that I have some pretty amazing role-models for adventures in my future healthcare career. They’ve shown me that empathy is first an act of imagination, and the smallest of things can make the biggest difference.

Since it’s christmas, I don’t mind baring my gratitude for all to see. Thank you to all the amazing people working within the NHS. I will fight to make sure that we all continue to have access to life-changing, compassionate care for free.

I know that if I can take any of those guys qualities as doctors, I would become a better person – both professionally and personally.